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Guy Kawasaki: On The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds & Actions

“It causes voluntary change of hearts and minds and therefore actions. It is more than manipulating people to help you get your way. It transforms situations and relationships. It converts hostility into civility. It reshapes civility into affinity. It changes skeptics and cynics into believers.” What is it?

In his new book, Guy Kawasaki calls it “enchantment.” The general idea is if you want to change the world, you have to get people on your side. And if you want to get people on your side, you have to delight them. Enchantment is about how to do that.

We recently chatted with the former Chief Evangelist at Apple about the art of enchantment, and what it means for making ideas happen. It turns out that – aside from making a fantastic product – it’s very much about something pretty basic: being a good person.

What role does sharing your dream with your potential customers or users play in the success of a company?

The pillars of enchantment are likeability, trustworthiness, and greatness. Greatness refers to the quality of your product, service, idea – in other words, your cause. Sharing your dream is a key part of enchantment for two reasons. First, you can’t assume that people know how great your cause is. You need to share knowledge about it to help people understand it. The world doesn’t beat a path to your door even if you created a better mousetrap.Second, the goal of enchantment is deep, long-lasting, and delightful engagement. These qualities are not the result of mere transactions. Apple shared the Macintosh dream of empowerment, creativity, and productivity. When you buy a Macintosh, it’s not a sales transaction. It’s embracing a way of life. This is why Apple enchants people and other computer manufacturers “close a sale.”

I get the impression that Apple didn’t have that dream of empowerment and creativity from Day 1. How did the company grow into that approach?

Like most great tech companies, the origin of Apple was probably closer to “let’s build what we want to use” and “it would be cool if” than a bigger dream of empowerment. Or, maybe even more accurately, perhaps Apple’s customers have decided that this is what it means to them. Ultimately, a company’s customers position it.

You can’t assume that people know how great your cause is.

A lot of what you talk about in Enchantment seems to be about reciprocity and accessibility.

By definition, it’s hard for people to know that you’re likable and trustworthy without engagement. I suppose marketing and advertising could fool people for a while, but long-term enchantment is unlikely without engagement.Don’t get me wrong: soul-bearing, looking-into-the-eyes of everyone isn’t possible – or completely necessary. Simply answering emails, tweets, comments, and updates within 24 hours will make you better than most people.

Enchantment requires simple courtesy and civility. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for readers of my book, such courtesy and civility aren’t very common anymore, so it’s easy to stand out.

Can a great product be successful without a larger vision?

Sure, the whole vision thing is overrated. Most entrepreneurs don’t have a grand, long-term vision for the product or service that they’re building. At the start, the right attitude is, “It would be cool if…” rather than “Someday this will all be ours.” Megalomaniacs are seldom enchanting or successful.

People with grandiose and complex visions bite off more than they can chew. Or, to use another analogy, they try to boil the ocean. They should start by boiling a pot of water better than anyone else in the world and work from there. I doubt that Richard Branson had a vision for the Virgin “Group” when he started out. I bet he just wanted a better airline, and he kept rolling along.

After you’ve achieved something magnificent, feel free to retroactively claim that you had the vision all the time. You’re entitled to that, but deep down inside, we both know that you achieved more success than you ever imagined.

You speak quite a bit about digital communication (Twitter, Facebook, etc). What’s your take on the power of enchantment in a face-to-face context? Is it superior to the written word?

Face-to-face is both more powerful and harder than the written word because people’s expectations of others are higher in person. However, this assumes that you can write decently and in a timely (24-hour response time) manner. The written word’s great advantage is that you can reach more people faster – Twitter and Facebook are the prime mechanisms to achieve this.

Megalomaniacs are seldom enchanting or successful.

How do you make a great face-to-face pitch?

The keys to a great pitch are brevity, graphics, and a demonstration. First, my recommendation is that a pitch observes the 10-20-30 rule: 10 slides, 20 minutes, and 30-point font. Second, you should use graphics – charts, diagrams, and photos – to illustrate your points. Third, a demonstration is worth a thousand slides. I could make the case that you shouldn’t try to pitch anyone until you can also do a demo.

Generosity, reciprocity, humbleness, joy, passion… all of these things come up in the book. If I didn’t know otherwise, I might think I was reading a book about just being a great person – and not creating a great company. Do you think it’s possible to have a great company without a charismatic leader?

A company is a collection of people. It reflects the personality of its employees. If a company employs dislikable people, it will be a dislikable company. If a company hires likable people, it will be a likable company – unless top management is dislikable and pollutes the behavior of employees.

It’s entirely possible to have a great company without a charismatic leader. In fact, the word “charisma” is not used once in Enchantment. The danger of a charismatic leader is that beneath the surfaces lies a narcissistic, insecure person who craves attention from sycophants. This type of leader is likely to surround himself with miniature versions of himself, which opens up another set of problems.

I don’t advocate drinking Kool-Aid and cults of personality – the goal is simple likeability and trustworthiness. If you want to attach one word to the type of leader that’s necessary, it’s “mensch” not “charismatic.” A mensch is gentle, likable, trustworthy, and has other people’s best interests at heart. That’s not how you would describe a charismatic leader.

What about “self-enchantment”? How can you keep yourself enchanted as you pursue a long-term, difficult project that does not have a clear finish line?

Sounds like you’re describing life in general. Enchantment of others, or yourself, is a process, not an event. It’s like fitness: you don’t stay fit without continuous effort. Maybe it’s an Asian thing: simple to learn but a lifetime to master.

The best way to keep yourself enchanted is to enjoy the process. We had a saying in the Macintosh Division: “The journey is the reward.” If you can embrace this attitude, you’ll be enchanted and enchant others for a long, long time.

I want to comment the point on being”charismatic” vs being “mensch”.For me a good executive, got to have both: charisma, and mensch.Very often charisma makes people engage to a cause in the first place, probably because they love the way the leader is, his aura…etc.But overtime charisma is not enough to engage people, they need more than attitude, and aura to follow you.That’s where kawasaki’s “mensch” is important for me, to back up charisma.

So i definitely think that the leader can really capitalize if he takes his legitimacy both from charisma and mensch

GraphicDesignBoss

I think in essence all designers help people change their mind about something through what we do.

We take someone’s perceptions of a product or a service or even a person through how we treat the design we can literally turn a heart towards someone or turn a heart away from someone.

Good stuff.

Ahoeveler

Richard Branson started out with a mail-order record company, not an airline.

Parin Patel

“The pillars of enchantment are likeability, trustworthiness, and greatness.”

I really like what Guy is saying here. I think we tend to lose sight of the 3 pillars he mentioned because we get too focused on the quantity.

So we forget about the quality. The quality of the relationship. The quality of the customer service.The quality of the product.The quality of the overall experience and interaction.

Showing that you actually care (genuinely of course :)) can go a long way. In my experience in Customer Service, Sales, Consulting and Blogging (and even Life in general), showing that you actually care about the person on the other end, there experience and how it relates to yourself or your product or service, can pay huge dividends.

jujubird46

Thank God somebody out there is preaching what I TRY TO practice in every aspect of life!!! This is totally great and will read this in it’s entirety!!! Awwwsuuuuuummm Stuff!! Luv it! Thanks for sharing this! Ju

Royal Dynamite

This article just changed my perspective about my approach to life, business and entrepreneurship. I really needed this one today. Just launched my t-shirt line site shop.royaldynamite.com and I am learning to deal with the emotions of a small start-up. Thanks Guy!

Guy Haim

Enchanting post guys. Would it be ok if i translate it to Hebrew?

dissertation service

beautiful article.. thanks a lot!

customstickers

Very beautiful article……………….I think.this article just changed my mind to life and business.

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